Pottery, knitting, love of making.

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Teapot 1

My new line of teapots is making its debut! This is the first one I’ve made since picking up The Teapot Book by Steve Woodhead and starting to really refine the way I shape them.

I love doing little loopy top handles, which give some motion to the pot. I made this spout tapered rather than straight for aesthetic reasons, but technically, this also helps the tea to flow out better–the liquid going from a wide to a narrow space builds pressure so it pours more forcefully, and it is less likely to dribble. (Getting spouts and pouring lips to be drip-less, by the way, is the never-ending potter’s dilemma.)

I’ve just learned to apply glazes by spraying, which has some great visual possibilities. This particular pot has two glazes on the outside, with a range of colors each. The base coat is a white glaze which reacts with the iron in the stoneware to create beautiful speckles and shades of brown; the darker detail on the sides is a green glaze which the kiln gave a metallic, almost graphite-y patina.

Other things I like: the lid catches itself when you tip the pot too far. (Ideally, all my lids will do this.) I also love the detail of giving the pot a different inside glaze–which usually involves red, as in this case. This is a 20-fluid-ounce pot.

More to come–I’ve got six others in various stages of undress, several with loop (over-the-top) handles, which I love, and one (so far) in porcelain. I’m really excited about them, even though I don’t use very many exclamation points to say this.